Has noone considered that maybe, just maybe the real reason is that Ruby is a terrible, terrible language with no good implementation and a community that's worse than 4chan and CounterStrike COMBINED?

This isn't a bug. Don't call it a bug. It's a specific way of operation.

The results in these program differ from what a *single* person expects - and this person is not a computer graphics person. On the other hand, the results are exactly what many computer graphics people expect.

The operating domain of these scaling algorithms is a computer image. It has nothing to do with "real" things, and nothing to do with the mistaken imagination of the author of TFA.

... because "pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest" is very illegal, right?

ISPs that don't do the mandatory spying on citizens, storing of logs, keeping tabs on the copyright-protection evading, crippleware-breaking terrorists, they have to be eliminated! For the sake of our civilization and of our children.

The TFA is a worthless troll, even more so than usual in these "Linux is not ready for the desktop" Slashdot articles.

It has the usual list of ignorant complaints (oh no, there is a choice of distributions, boo hoo! oh no, there is a choice of GUI toolkits, boo hoo!), but some points stand out in their sheer stupidity.

"Bad security model: there's zero protection against keyboard keyloggers and against running malicious software (Linux is viruses free only due to its extremely low popularity). sudo is very easy to circumvent (social engineering). sudo still requires CLI (see clause 4.)"

So as expected, there is a veritable army of people demanding the old behavior restored; also, most probably a lot of them will "downgrade" or stay with using EXT3.

Of course, the things at fault are really the buggy applications. But even deeper than that, the *paradigm* of having a lot of generated files (that store important user data) that are rewritten unconditionally at each program startup is wrong. What the hell is up with that?

Can't they come up with a method where you rewrite a file only when absolutely necessary? Why must all icon locations, thumbnails and other such GUI desktop bullshit be written and rewritten zillions of times?

Not to mention that EXT3 is just one file system out of many, and arguably not even a very good one. It's rather weird that it was chosen as a default option for so many "popular" distributions (maybe out of some misguided desire to be backwards compatible?). If your application (or again, *paradigm*) works well on only one file system, then it's most probably not the file system's fault.

Posted
by
kdawsonon Friday January 16, 2009 @10:22AM
from the self-selected-statistics dept.

jammag points out a look at statistics from the Popularity Contest projects on Debian and Ubuntu. These projects track the download and upgrade habits of their respective distributions' users, revealing — no surprise here — that Ubuntu users are more likely to be newbies than Debian users. The numbers reveal, for instance, that 86 percent of Ubuntu machines use the proprietary NVidia driver, where only a mere sliver of Debian machines do. Likewise, Debian users are far more eclectic in their software choice, less likely to use any default options. The article concludes with a look at the limits of what conclusions can be drawn from statistics like these. "In general, Debian users seem more eclectic in their use of software than Ubuntu users, and less likely to use an application simply because it is included by default. Debian users also seem more likely to be concerned to maintain a free installation than Ubuntu users — a conclusion that is hardly surprising when you consider Debian's reputation for freedom, but is still interesting to see being supported by statistics. ... To what extent last week's figures are typical is uncertain. Very likely, studying the figures over a longer period would produce different results. Possibly, too, those who participate in the Popularity Contests are not typical users of either Ubuntu or Debian. "

Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Monday January 12, 2009 @12:47PM
from the all-out-of-joementum dept.

evan_arrrr! writes "From the article:
Since the early 20th century physicists have known that light carries momentum, but the way this momentum changes as light passes through different media is much less clear. Two rival theories of the time predicted precisely the opposite effect for light incident on a dielectric: one suggesting it pushes the surface in the direction light is traveling; the other suggesting it drags the surface backwards towards the source of light. After 100 years of conflicting experimental results, a team of experimentalists from China believe they have finally found a resolution."

Posted
by
Soulskillon Sunday December 28, 2008 @12:12PM
from the piece-by-piece dept.

The other A. N. Other writes "It seems that Microsoft couldn't keep the lid on Windows 7 beta 1 until the new year. By now, several news outlets have their hands on the beta 1 code and have posted screenshots and information about this build. ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 column says: 'This beta is of excellent quality. This is the kind of code that you could roll out and live with. Even the pre-betas were solid, but finally this beta feels like it's "done." This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled.' ITWire points out that this copy has landed on various torrent sites, and while it appears to be genuine, there are no guarantees. Neowin has a post confirming that it's the real thing, and saying Microsoft will be announcing the build's official availability at CES in January."

Posted
by
kdawsonon Tuesday December 09, 2008 @11:57PM
from the buddy-can-you-paradigm dept.

Keyper7 writes "The first programming course I had during my computer science schooling, aptly named 'Introduction to Programming,' was given in C because its emphasis was on imperative programming. A little before I graduated, though, it was decided that the focus would change to object-oriented programming with Java. (I must emphasize that the change was not made because of any hype about Java or to dumb down the course; back then and still, it's presented by good Java programmers who try to teach good practices and do not encourage excessive reliance on libraries.) But the practices taught are not paradigm-independent, and this sparked a discussion that continues to this day: which paradigm is most appropriate to introduce programming? Besides imperative and object-oriented, I know teachers who firmly believe that functional programming is the best choice. I'm interested in language-independent opinions that Slashdotters might have on this matter. Which paradigm is good to introduce programming while keeping a freshman's mind free enough for him/her to learn other paradigms afterwards?"

Posted
by
timothyon Friday November 07, 2008 @09:58AM
from the bonus-if-it-uses-10-fingers-at-once dept.

Count Fenring writes "Since the Vi version of this question was both interesting and popular, let's hear from the other end of the spectrum. What are your favorite tricks, macros, extensions, and techniques for any of the various Emacs? Myself, I like 'M-x dunnet' ;-)"